GruvMe.com: Failure is conceivably an option

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Scott, one of our writers, received a wireless microphone for review and was encouraged, as a side trip, to visit GruvMe.com (there’s an umlaut over the U, but I don’t feel like finding said umlaut and I am purposely leaving out the link so no one stumbles into this trap like I did). Offered up by a PR person in what appears to be a fit of misguided bundling, I find that I cannot recommend GruvMe.com to anyone except the willfully masochistic and the brain-dead.

What is GruvMe? Once you dig past the empty start-up screen and highly intrusive and ungrammatical sign-up page, you are offered a media player. You can play songs in this media player and you are offered the opportunity to search for artists and buy music using some unnamed method. I searched for “dog,” feeling that perhaps “Hound Dog” or “Three Dog Night” would appear. They did not. Because the music player was playing techno I tried “drum bass.” Again, no results. I then clicked on the song list on the side. The song title was there, but there was no band name. I attempted to search for an artist that I knew was in the list – it was right there on the sidebar – and hunted for Bryan Adams. There was one song – “Summer of 69.” I play it. It plays “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down. When it was over, it repeated the song. I closed the tab for GruvMe and shivered the way you shiver when you swallow one of those gross lumps of who knows what that you sometimes cough up during the course of a day.

GruvMe must fail. In a world of good ideas, it is a me-too media service that can’t even get its core business model – selling the songs people want to listen to – right. These clowns can’t even explain themselves in their FAQ, let alone produce a service worth or time and/or effort.

11. Does GRÜVme work with my portable player?
GRÜVME offers a vast selection of titles and more are being added daily that can
be used on virtually any MP3 or I-Pod style device. Our user generated
content is non DRM and can be purchased or downloaded for free. We
encourage our users to create and share their content with each outer.
A GRÜVme membership give you more ways to discover and enjoy music on
more players.

User generated? Vast selection of titles? Perhaps the creators of GruvMe are mistaking their service for iTunes. Apparently there is also some sort of IE-only site I’m missing, but to dig further would be worthless. If this public-facing “free” service is any indication, the rest can’t be much better.

Overall, I find GruvMe to be an affront to all those with a good idea and little capital but the site sets the bar so low that clearly anyone with “Learn CSS in 30 Days” and a dream can now produce any sort of trash.